the public library is for: the public

This could very easily descend into an anti-business or urban planning rant, so let's go pointform:

• the city is for its citizens
• the public library is for the public
• public space is essential to a healthy urban environment
• the central public library provides one of the few remaining opportunities to enhance and enlarge public space
• you can't use business terms or voodoo business math to analyze public good

The latest "why a new central Ottawa Public Library" article begins

What's the business case for a $200-million central library? What return will taxpayers get for that investment? How will it result in better service to users of the library? What are the alternatives and why were they ruled out?

Searching in vain for a business case for a $200-million library - Ottawa Citizen - by Mark Sutcliffe - July 19, 2008

Flawed assumptions lead to flawed conclusions.  Our society favours many flawed assumptions and metaphors.  In particular, the idea of the world as an efficient assembly line producing business value.  Government is not a business.  Public good does not have direct monetary ROI.  Cities are not factories that bring components in on assembly lines (i.e. people in on highways) in the morning, get them to do a bunch of work, and then ship them out for storage (i.e. to the suburbs, on the highways again) in the evening.  At least, they shouldn't be.

If you follow these assumptions, what you get is a city with wide highways cutting through all parts of it, as highways always have a "business case", and private space (like say, $300 million convention centres) easily approved, as private space provides an easy "business case", while public concert halls and public libraries languish.  At work you PRODUCE, at home you CONSUME.  People actually love their long solitary private car commutes because it's the only place society permits them to be alone with their thoughts.

So you end up with some Disneyland city full of private space where the idea of return on investment is to provide lots of parking near the wide streets so tourists can zoom around and "contribute to the local economy" by buying a burger at McDonald's.

So let's ditch that nonsense and get back to reality.

The "reality case" for a new central Ottawa Public Library is this:

A vibrant city has people living downtown.  It serves primarily its actual residents.  It provides them with many amenities, not least of which is beautiful places and spaces.  Ottawa, land of the cheap glass tower office building (interspersed, for variety, with the cheap concrete stalinist tower), is starving for public space.  City residents are so used to private space that they don't even use hotel lobbies anymore.  Other than the market, the only place you will see large numbers of people is in the private space of the Rideau Centre mall.  This is not a recipe for a healthy citizenry.

The case for a central Ottawa Public Library is that people need a place to meet and think and be outside in the city.  If it's a signature piece of architecture, so much the better, but be very careful.  Signature architecture leads to regrettable nonsense like Ottawa's brutalist National Arts Centre, an undistinguished pile of concrete where a bunch of lines scraped in raw concrete is the extent of building decoration.  It does at least have usable internal space, whereas much architecture since the 1950s managed to be ugly outside and unusable inside.  God help us if decades from now we're fighting about saving some inverted ziggurat looming over the city.  Quite honestly if they just made a cube that had a giant well-lit room, I'd consider it a step forward.

Wallpaper had a feature "Loan Rangers" in the June 2008 issue, about interesting new public libraries.  Unfortunately it is not available online.

There are those who think [libraries] are an anachronism in the digital age, a sort of urbanised village hall, frequented only by disoriented immigrants doing DIY language courses.  Then there are those who insist they are still vital amenities, 'universities of the street corner', crucial municipal centres at the heart of the community.

(The above image from the opening page of the article is of the spectacular but currently ill-starred José Vasconcelos Library, the Biblioteca Vasconcelos.  I also found a good photo set on Flickr.)

Previously:
December 21, 2007  the central public library is a key civic space
August 25, 2007  America, land of the grand library

Comments

[François Dubé]

Have a look at the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec, the exterior is maybe not that great, but the interior is beautifully designed. http://www.patkau.ca/project/gbq.htm#

[Michael Ireland]

Well said. Ottawa does deserve a new central public library. I totally agree that those who seek to find a monetary bottom line ROI for a public library are going to search in vain. The value of a public library is in the public good it provides to its community as a meeting space and learning space. Libraries need to be recognized as being an important part of the learning continuum of individuals as they grow from children to adults. They also serve to make up for a market failure in that no one can own all the books they will need through life to learn, enjoy and grow.

Having said that, there are ideas that could be explored to leverage resources within the local community similar to what has been done elsewhere. The example of the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec is a good one that could be emulated here in Ottawa. Could something be done to perhaps bring together the Ottawa Public Library and the Library and Archives of Canada (which has its main location on 395 Wellington and also in need of a new building!) and have one new beautiful building?